Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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The Unseen Pain of the Vietnam War: Long Term Effects of Agent Orange on Labor Market Outcomes
Po Yin Wong, Luu Duc Toan Huynh
Queen Mary University of London
Discussant: Benedikt Janzen (University of Passau)
Using the nearest distances to Northern Vietnamese Army base as an instrumental variable for exposure to Agent Orange, we investigate its long-term effects on education and labor market outcomes of affected individuals in Vietnam. Our findings reveal that a one-unit increase in the exposure score at the commune level is associated with a significant reduction in education attainment, a decrease of 1.7 working days per month, and a reduction of 0.4 working hours per day. These effects are particularly
pronounced among individuals who were born and continued to live in high-exposure areas, with persistent adverse impacts observed among their children as well. Our results remain robust after controlling for income and accounting for potential confounders. Furthermore, we find that exposure to Agent Orange leads to a persistent reduction in household and labor income by approximately 25%, highlighting the need for policies to address the long term and intergenerational socioeconomic effects of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese population.
Is air pollution keeping us up at night?
Patrick Bigler1, Benedikt Janzen2
1University of Lausanne, Switzerland; 2University of Passau, Germany
Discussant: Moritz Drupp (Universität Hamburg)
Surprisingly little is known about the causal impact of air pollution on human sleep. Using daily district-level data on sleep duration collected by half a million consumer wearables in Germany from 2020 to 2022, we find that even low levels of particulate matter air pollution adversely impact human sleep. We document that a 10 ppm increase in the average daily PM10 concentration reduces sleep duration on average by 1.1 minutes. To strengthen the causal interpretation of our findings, we employ an instrumental variables approach, using wind as a predictor for local air pollution. Although the effects we find are modest, the critical role of sleep in human well-being underscores the substantial social burden of sleep loss caused by air pollution. Our findings offer a potential mechanism linking air pollution to a wide range of human outcomes.
Low Emission Zones and Environmental Justice
Bos Björn1, Drupp Moritz2, Sager Lutz3
1Universität Hamburg, Germany; 2ETH Zürich; 3ESSEC Business School
Discussant: Ivan Ackermann (University of Bern)
Low emission zones (LEZ) represent a key national environmental policy instrument used to explicitly address air pollution in cities throughout Europe. LEZs have successfully reduced air pollution and associated health damages in regulated areas. But how are air quality benefits distributed in society? To address this question, we examine the Environmental Justice implications of LEZs in Germany. We combine gridded data on resident characteristics, including income and a proxy for ethnicity, with high-resolution estimates of fine particle (PM2.5) concentrations. We estimate heterogeneous treatment effects with a difference-in-differences approach and confirm previous findings that LEZs have reduced PM2.5 exposures. We show that these pollution reductions are distributed unequally because air quality improvements within targeted areas are heterogeneous and because residents of targeted zones are not representative of the overall population. We find that LEZ-induced air quality benefits are distributed pro-poor within LEZs, meaning that they are larger in areas with lower income. We show that this finding is sensitive to how benefits from cleaner air scale with income when assessed from a nationwide perspective. In addition, while pollution reductions accrue dis-proportionally to Germans within LEZs, they accrue dis-proportionally to non-Germans nationwide due to a spatial clustering of non-Germans in larger cities. Overall, our results suggest that LEZs, as implemented in Germany, yield nuanced Environmental Justice implications.
Perception vs. Reality: The Air Pollution Gap and Socioeconomic Status∗
Ivan Ackermann
University of Bern, Switzerland
Discussant: Po Yin Wong (Queen Mary University of London)
The literature indicates that air pollution disproportionately affects socioeconom-
ically disadvantaged groups, who experience higher exposure levels. Additionally, it
suggests vagely that a discrepancy exists between perceived and measured air pollution.
Linking survey and air quality data, this study examines this perception gap, confirm-
ing that lower-income individuals are more likely to feel affected, while individuals
in countries with high measured air pollution do not always report feeling impacted.
Exploiting natural variation in coal-fired power plant operating days and London’s
air pollution alerts, this study evaluates how interventions enhance awareness of air
quality and reduce the perception gap through channels of information and exposure.
The findings will determine whether these measures not only improve objective air
quality but also align public perceptions with reality, thereby mitigating disparities
across socioeconomic groups. The results offer actionable insights for policies aimed at
promoting environmental equity and fostering informed decision-making.
